The gender gap

Editor’s Note: Every once in a while we spot a diary that piques our interest and believe it will make for an interesting discussion. The topic of women voting — especially the lack of single women voting — is a subject I would like to further explore in time for my feminism roundtable at YearlyKos. Thank you, Pat-of-butter-in-a-sea-of-grits for bringing up the topic! Elisa

I hope this hasn’t already been blogged about – if so I apologize.

Over on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org/…), there’s a blog entry stating that the gender gap in voting may be increasing, after being down for a few years.

” The gender breakdown of the Cook poll shows an 11-point gender gap, with women favoring the Democrats by 15 points while men favor the Dems by only 4.

Whether women support the Democrats by a 28 percent margin or a 15 percent margin, it seems fairly clear that women’s strong preference for the Democratic Party — which had shrunk from 12 points during the 2000 presidential election to just 3 points during the 2004 presidential contest — has returned. “

I seem to know several female Dems who are married to male Republicans. Do you? I haven’t quite had the courage to ask any of them about it. It’s interesting to me because for both me and my husband, our choice of political party speaks deeply to our shared value system. I can’t imagine being married to someone who had such different values. Of course, a lot of people – such as my IL’s who are a classic gender-gap couple – just don’t care that much about politics.

I wonder how much the increase in the gender gap is due to differing opinions on the war and terrorism – those “daddy” issues. Alternet suggests South Dakota and other abortion laws as a point of contention but I’m not really sure that women are more pro-choice than men are, as a whole.